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Sia: Nine things we learned when she spoke to Louis Theroux

The second guest on the second series of Grounded with Louis Theroux is Sia, the acclaimed Australian singer-songwriter, vocalist and director. Her songs, including Chandelier and Cheap Thrills, have amassed billions of views online. In an extraordinarily open discussion, she tells Louis about her struggles with fame, addiction and how she’s finally learning to value herself.

Here are nine things we learned…

Listen to Grounded with Louis Theroux: Sia

1. She was set for retirement, but then Titanium happened

I thought fame was going to rescue me and it didn’t.
Sia

About nine years ago, Sia said she’d had enough. She’d released several albums and been, she says, “minimally successful”, but she didn’t want to make music anymore. She was ready to retire. Her plan was ruined by David Guetta and the song Titanium. “David Guetta put out Titanium with my vocals on it, which he hadn't asked me permission for!” She exclaims. Sia had written the song and provided sample vocals, which would usually be re-recorded by another, more famous, singer. “He just assumed everybody wants to be famous – ‘She's gonna be so excited that I left her on this track’. I wrote it for Alicia Keys.” The huge success of the song put Sia on a rapid path to becoming one of the biggest pop stars on the planet.

2. She doesn’t listen to music

Surprisingly, for a woman who has released eight studio albums and many more singles, Sia says she almost never listens to music. She takes Louis through the contents of her music library and says: “It's Abba. It's Jimi Hendrix. The best of The Pretenders. Stevie Wonder. Grace by Jeff Buckley. And Madness, Wings of a Dove.” That’s it. She says she would like Wings of a Dove played at her funeral.

3. But she watches a lot of TV

Sia tells Louis, “I totally am” more interested in TV than music, because, “I feel like I’m there without having to be out there and in danger.” She says she has, “barely got out of bed for a year” during the pandemic. She now has a set-up where TV is projected onto her bedroom ceiling. “I love to watch television so much,” she says. “I just love watching documentaries.” Fittingly, she has a particular affection for Louis’s documentaries, telling him, “I have watched every episode of all your documentaries.” In fact, she’s such a fan that she says her ideal dinner party guests would be Louis, Elvis Presley and Ruby Wax (fortuitously, a forthcoming guest on Grounded).

4. She became reliant on drugs and alcohol after the death of a boyfriend

Sia is very honest about her struggles with addiction. She is now sober and says her history with drug and alcohol dependence dates back to the sudden death of a boyfriend around 25 years ago. “I was on my way to [London] to visit my ex-boyfriend and he was killed by a hit and run on his birthday,” she says. She stayed in London with her boyfriend’s friends. “We were all children, 19-20 years old. We all became very reliant on drugs and alcohol, to sort of soften the blow of his loss. I had no idea what alcoholism was then or drug addiction or anything like that. I just thought I'm 20 and I just like partying.”

5. She had to drink to perform on stage

Sia says that performing in public has always frightened her and that she still doesn’t enjoy it. She says she had to drink in order to feel comfortable on stage. “I did one tour with Zero 7 (her former group) where I was sober, and it was the hardest tour of my life. That was when I realised, ‘I’m not built for this business. I want to be behind the scenes.” She says the only way she enjoyed it was, “sh*t-faced drunk… Without the drink I was terrified.”

6. Fans changed her view of performing

[Fans] would tell me personal things that my music had done for them or their children. That’s when it started to make me feel valuable.
Sia

While she still doesn’t love performing, Sia says her fans have changed her view of it. She began to read fan letters and talk to fans and says they, “would tell me personal things that my music had done for them or their children. That’s when it started to make me feel valuable.” She notes one story that really changed things for her: “A woman told me that her child who was… severely low functioning on the autism spectrum, that my music was the only thing that stopped him from killing himself. When she told me that I was like, ‘I need to just get out there and do it. It's my duty.’”

7. She’s working through complex PTSD

Sia tells Louis that she was diagnosed with, “complex PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) from early trauma,” from experiences stemming back to her childhood. “My mum had postpartum depression,” she says. “My dad is a very eccentric person and he had an alter ego called Stan.” When he got angry, “he would turn into Stan.” She says that she was sexually abused at the age of nine. The trauma was compounded in later life with the death of her teenage boyfriend, a neighbour committing suicide, and witnessing a violent attack on a man. She says that in the last two years she has done, “what I’ve needed my entire adult life, which was to just wrap myself into a little burrito and self-care for two or three years.”

8. She thinks her own music is often “turdy”

She’s had 10 UK top 10 hits and been nominated for nine Grammys. Most people would consider Sia very good at what she does. Sia disagrees. She thinks a lot of her music is “dumbed down”. She says, “I have to dumb it down to a degree, or make it broader and less specific, because then it can appeal to more people. They can project their sh*t onto it more easily. Don’t be specific because that alienates 70% of the world.” She calls her regular collaborator David Guetta “magic”, because, “whatever we do, no matter how turdy it is, it is successful. I will sing something so whatever over what he sends me and he can polish a turd, I swear.” She does at least acknowledge that Chandelier is great.

9. She thinks fame is a poison

Sia tells Louis that her opinions of fame have never changed. She still doesn’t want it and thinks fame is a poison. “I’m still exactly the same person. I still have exactly the same insecurities. This has done nothing for me… I thought fame was going to rescue me and it didn’t.” She hoped it would save her from, “feelings of worthlessness.” Louis says he hopes that she sees how talented she is and how valued she is. “I’m really getting there,” she says.

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